The use of mobile telephones is becoming more prevalent. More people now carry mobile telephones wherever they go; they expect a signal in most locations and expect to be able to communicate with others and to receive information virtually anytime and anywhere. But, the current technological climate hampers the ability of a person to perform queries and to receive information via a telephone.
An individual often finds himself in a situation where he or she desires information or an answer to question from a web site, but does not have ready access to a computer in order to answer his or her question. What the individual does often have, though, is a mobile telephone, land line, voice-enabled computer or other similar voice input device. In these situations it would be desirable to simply pick up the telephone and somehow query the web site and have the answer be delivered promptly. Even if the user is able to telephone the organization that owns the web site (for example), it can prove difficult for a user to find a person to speak with, let alone have a question answered.
And although progress in speech recognition technology has been steady, much improvement is still needed. For one, even the very best speech recognition software coupled with a high-quality, corded headset microphone can only achieve 90-95% accuracy. That means that about 1 out of 10 spoken words is recognized incorrectly by the software even under the very best conditions. For a user attempting to communicate with a service or web site owner by mobile telephone in order to find information, the conditions are far from optimal; the quality of the received user speech can be poor and dropped connections can occur. Generally, the quality of a live telephone connection (especially with mobile telephones, cordless home telephones, “smart” telephones, a VoIP connection, a SKYPE-type telephone service, etc.) can be poor compared with traditional, wired analog telephones. Any service that handles user speech arriving over a live telephone connection must deal with lower quality voice data. Also, any time user speech is being recorded over a live telephone connection there is always the possibility of dropouts, static, dead zones, and a dropped connection. Therefore, attempting to use speech recognition technology to properly understand and answer a user's question originating from a mobile telephone can be challenging.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/368,840 filed Mar. 6, 2006 entitled “Message Transcription, Voice Query and Query Delivery System” presents techniques for converting speech to text. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/763,870 filed Jun. 15, 2007 entitled “Speech Controlled Services and Devices Using Internet” presents techniques for controlling services and devices using voice. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/763,943 filed Jun. 15, 2007 entitled “Precision Speech to Text Conversion” presents techniques for enhancing speech recognition technology. Each of these applications is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Even in light of these new techniques, new improvements are welcome. Therefore, based upon the above state of technology and the needs of individuals, systems and methods are desired that would address the above problems.